Call me a killjoy, but precious baby scan pics should be kept private
Surely I’m not the only one feeling a bit uneasy at the sight of diver Tom Daley and his husband, Dustin Lance Black, proudly showing off their unborn baby’s ultrasound scan?
It’s just wrong. Isn’t it? By which I don’t mean their sexual proclivities, legal union or their surrogacy arrangements – it’s the 21st century, after all, people. I’ve met Tom and he’s ace.
No, it’s the actual picture I object to, on the grounds it’s weirdly intrusive. I know I’m swimming against the tide (plus ça change), but I really cavil at the vogue for posting antenatal photos on social media.
It’s perfectly natural for soon-to-be parents to be excited, especially when there may have been infertility or other barriers to conception.
I’ve been there, got the printouts and, while I pored
over them hourly, there was no way I was letting anyone else apart from my husband have so much as a single peep at them.
It might (apparently does) sound a bit hypervigilant, but I felt it incumbent on me as a mother to protect my unborn infant from the world’s prurient gaze. And I wasn’t even famous enough for anybody outside my immediate circle to care.
But in these days of oversharing on social media, where something is only deemed to have happened – lunch, nail appointment, holiday – if there’s an actual picture to prove it, foetal photos are pretty much de rigueur.
Friends send them by email, and I’ve even seen them printed up into little greetings cards, which is beyond strange. I think if I were handed one of those four-dimensional photos, I might faint.
Such is the fetishisation of first-time parenthood, in particular, these days that
I’ll probably be branded a miserable old killjoy. But hey, it’s nothing the children haven’t said to me already. I wish Tom and his family every happiness, away from public scrutiny.